Eyes to See, Ears to Hear

Archive for May, 2008

Wondering how working is going for me?  Challenging so far just because everything is so new… everything… well, except my gadgets and gizmos.  I’m still very familiar with them.

So, what am I doing today?  Well, all of my audio equipment hasn’t been tested in nearly a year and before I begin planning any recording project, I need to make sure I’m as equipped as I think I am.  Got out my mixer, XLR cables, microphones, headphones, and mic stands to begin testing.  Hopefully I will have everything tested by the end of Monday.  We’ll see… I’ve got to remember…

This is Africa.

Paper Airplane

The walk between home and the office is about 12 minutes each way.  I am developing a routine of coming to eat lunch with Dana and Asher.  Today, Dana was away having tea and lunch with some new friends so I had to fend for myself.  PB & J and a big fat carrot did me right.  I had a meeting scheduled with the Language Team Leaders today but didn’t have anything to write on at the office.  So, I grabbed one of our spiral notebooks before I headed out the door to return to work.

About halfway to the office, I passed 4 little boys none of whom could’ve been over 5 years old.  One of them had what appeared to be a piece of trash plastic… then he began to hold it up as if it were an airplane.  It amazed me that he made a make shift airplane.  Especially since he lived in obvious extreme poverty and I have yet to hear only one high-flying jetliner my whole time here in Mbeya.  But I asked him in Swahili what it was and sure ‘nough, he said it was an airplane.

Hahaha… watch this little man.  I bent down and told them I was going to make an airplane out of paper.  All of them were immediately shocked as they gathered close to me.  It took me about a minute to fold it and I don’t think any sets of eyes peering on blinked a single time.

I finished, cocked my arm back and threw it.  Nose dive.  It even stuck in the dirt.  “I’ll try again!”  I exclaimed, trying not to let down their hopes.  This time I stood up and aimed up.  It flew a good 40 feet away.  They took off after it as I stood behind them yelling, “Michukue! Ni zawadi.” (Take it!  It is a gift.)

It appears living in a different culture is going to be more difficult than I was allowing myself to realize. Here’s the situation:

We have quite a few of our things (mainly baby items gifted to us while in the States) on a couple of pallets that were shipped air freight to Dar es Salaam. The shipment arrived in Dar on May 3. It finally cleared customs this past Monday afternoon.

Enter Faith Logistics (FL) into the picture.

It is a Tanzanian company which SIL uses for most, if not all, large shipments to/from Tanzania. They handle the whole clearing process for us and deliver the items to SIL’s desired location. The desired location for our stuff is of course Mbeya so I hired them to haul it 14 hours inland for us. I also had them pick up the remaining items of ours at the SIL – Dar office, leftovers from our first trip over last year. They were supposed to pick it up there late Monday afternoon. My contact in the office text messaged me saying they picked it up and left with it, but not until Tuesday at 10am. I was told by Anania, manager at FL, the truck would leave immediately for Mbeya following the pickup at the office. After numerous exchanges with him throughout the evening, the communication ended that day with this: Gari imeondoka jioni leo na inategemewa kufika Mbeya kesho kuanzia asubuhi. Meaning… The car has left this evening and is expected to arrive in Mbeya tomorrow to begin [unloading] in the morning.

Okay. I can handle that. Sounds definite, right? eh-eh.

I take the day off to welcome the arrival of the truck only to go well into the afternoon without hearing a word. “Where are your guys, Anania?” is a message I sent to him. He called me back an hour or so later to apologize but he found out his driver decided not to leave yesterday evening due to ‘security’ reasons. He instead left this morning and should be arriving in Mbeya at any moment now. “Okay. What is the driver’s name and phone number?” The call conveniently disconnected at that moment. I’m a hard person to upset but this was working me over I tell ya.

My good friend Tunku (co-owner of the Swahili school we attended) got in touch with me at perfect timing. Come to find out, he knows Anania and knows him well. Doesn’t trust him and deems hims a liar, but knows him and calls him for me. An hour later, Anania sends me the driver’s name and phone number. Tunku calls him to find out… get this… that the driver is in Mikumi. Where’s Mikumi you wonder? It is 7-8 hours away from Mbeya. I am livid at that point and send Anania some pretty demanding e-mails requiring him to tell me where the driver is, where he will stop and when, and when he is going to leave that point in the morning.

Finally, this morning our branch operations director called me to help out. He gave me some great insight on Tanzania and how things operate here. The best thing for me to do is hang loose and wait for the truck to get here when it gets here. 11am Thursday morning now and the best thing for me to do is to hang loose because this is the norm here.  That’s a big ol’ test, I tell ya.

A consistently updated status between driver and Dar isn’t normal or expected, unlike my western expectations. All along, what I’ve been told is what Anania believes I want to hear. So, if the truck has yet to leave Dar but he knows I really want it to have left already, he will tell me it has because in a relationship-based culture, he could not be the one to bring disappointment upon me that it indeed hasn’t. If the truck breaks down in Iringa (4 hours away) and a repair part can’t be obtained for 5 days, I’ll still hear that it is almost here or should be here at any moment. Basically the driver has one expectation on him… get the stuff to its destination. Every detail in between is irrelevant including time, status, etc. He ultimately just has to get it here at some point in the future. This means the only expectation I can have is that it gets here when it gets here. Anything else would be unfair to Anania.

You can see how frustrating this can be to someone who is used to things like UPS where you can go online and at any given point find out when and where your package was last handled. This has now become my biggest challenge in Tanzania since I first arrived last year. Learning Swahili was even easier.

So I hit the wall of people many cars before I am able to see the dogs.  No choice.  Gotta go.  Long legs help a lot in stepping over people… and their children… and their bags… and a little of everything else they seem to be traveling with by train.

It took me about 15 minutes to clear 4 third class cars at the end of the last of which the train began slowing for one of its many, many stops.  As soon as that happened, about 100 people in the car I was in got to their feet.  The pathway became gridlocked.  Gotta wait it out until after these people get off.

Hmmm… that guy sure is really close up behind me.  I really don’t like feeling him so close he’s touching my bum and even worse, I feel his hand trying to slip into my right car shorts pocket.  Seriously, dude, are you that bad of a pickpocket?  You’re like brushing my hand on every attempt.  Really wasn’t anything in the pocket besides my water but still, this dude needed to back off.  So, I acted like I lost my balance, fell backward into him creating a little space around us, then turned face to face with him.  In broken English, “I need get by.”  Yeah, right.  That’s why you were all up on my rear trying to stick your hand in my pocket.  I’m confident in my manhood so right after he took about 4 steps forward to the same gridlock I was waiting behind, I slid in right behind him.  Yep, fella, it’s me again, all up on your rear.  And what’s that?  Oh, sorry, didn’t mean to brush your hand in the vicinity of your pocket.  Next thing I know, he’s practically mauling people in the gridlock.  Once he got a couple of people in between us he stopped.  Guess he was closing up shop for now.  Funny thing is that a little, maybe chest-high to me, friend of his went for my left cargo pocket once we finally stopped and people began to move to the doors.  If Teddy and Theo didn’t need it so bad, I would’ve unbuttoned my pocket just to let him open up his prize of dog food later.  This time I was able to stumble hard into him since people were basically pushing and shoving to get to the door.  He about left his feet.  No more hands around my pockets.

Got up to Amir’s office about 10 minutes later and exchanged greetings before he motioned me on into the mattress cave.  I went in and Sayee was only about 2 minutes behind me.  He really liked being around the dogs and maybe even me.  At one of the following stops, a lot of cargo was being loaded into the little bit of space they had left in the car.  Sayee stood in front of the dog kennels and firmly told them that they couldn’t stack anything on or near the kennels.  Wow, that was huge.  Thanks!

8 ish pm: We finally reach the stop where Amir will allow me to take the dogs off the train to relieve themselves.  I hook them to their leashes the Sayee sticks a hand out to take one of them.  This guy is AWWRIGHT!  He takes the loud one and I take Teddy.  There were a ton of people at that train stop.  Most all of them went well out of their way to go around us and the two dogs.  They did their thang and we hopped back into the cargo car.  Back in the kennel with fresh water and Sayee and I hop back down onto the platform outside.  The train gives its warning horn that it is about to leave any second now and we start hustling down the side toward first class.  About midway, the train begins to move and Sayee pulls me into the nearest door.  We made it the rest of the way inside.

9 ish pm: Much to Dana’s delight, I tapped on the door for her to unlock the cabin and let me in.  She was feeding Asher so I gave her a minute to cover up so Sayee could quickly meet this wife and baby I was so passionate to talk about for hours up in the cargo car.  He gave his greetings then told me not to worry that he’ll take care of the dogs overnight.  The guy showed up at 7:30am the next morning to let us know the dogs are great and that he had given them more water.  Of course I tipped him.

9 am Tuesday: We arrive to the TAZARA station in Mbeya and we quickly discover there will be no porters to help us with our luggage like there were back in Dar.  Time for me to literally hurl all of it out of the nearest window.  Our friends the Duncans and their guests from Britain whom were on the train, too, helped carry it all to the Land Rover awaiting to take us home.

Sayee comes to get me on the platform to show me where the dogs were unloaded.  I went and he grabbed Theo’s kennel and I grabbed Teddy’s.  I stopped quickly when I remembered that I hadn’t said goodbye (or tipped) Amir.  I saw him standing on the train in his office door so I quickly ran over and gave him a big handshake. “Tutaonana.” We will see each other [again].

Finally, we pulled into the Baptist compound, took the luggage, dogs and baby inside to begin our life here in Mbeya.

Heavy Luggage

I’ll pick up the rest of Mazoezi ya Treni later.  I wanted to show you a shot of what we traveled with to Tanzania.  This is a fully loaded Isuzu Rodeo.  The only space on the inside was a sliver of seat in the back middle for Dana, Asher’s car seat mounted next to her and me in the driver’s seat.  Other than that, we were loaded down and every single bit of it went onto the plane(s) with us:

Okay, so I meant the day after the day after tomorrow in my last post. Let’s continue…

There were two guys, one younger one older, in the cargo ‘office’ when I appeared in the doorway. Time to kick in the Swahili memory because Theo and Teddy’s existence may very well depend on it! I went through the normal greetings, about four exchanges in all, before I began explaining my situation… or actually the dog’s situation. The younger fella spoke up the most and spoke with authority as if it were his cargo car. In a short while, I ended up discovering his name to be Amir. But before that, he began asking me questions about my destination, why was I bringing dogs and how often I hoped to repeat bringing them water. Situation was looking kinda bleak for the dogs as my first visit could be my last before we get all the way up to Mbeya.

The doorway into the front section of the cargo car was… yep, blocked with stacks of foam mattresses from floor to ceiling. What did Amir tell me I had to do? Wait, of course, until the next long stop when one of them would be able to take me outside the train and into the side door of the compartment. Time to converse. I tried extremely hard to talk a lot in Swahili even though Amir made it clear he knew English well. The more I talked the more he warmed up to this lanky mzungu wanting to go out of his way for two animals Amir was hauling in his load. After a number of jokes, tales of families and Amir offering his seat to me, I was happy there was a friendship started.

11ish am: By the time the long stop was reached, the cargo office had an audience of five Tanzanians standing around to see what this mzungu would say, or try to say, next. The guard from the first blocked door was one of them and he was the one again who went outside, with me tagging along this time, to get into the forward compartment. I drank half of the bottle of water I brought for the dogs because I was in the hot office for so long, but it was 1/2 liter bottle so they still had plenty. I remembered Teddy’s kennel was the only one with a food/water dish so I borrowed Amir’s scissors (he had some kind of sewing hobby going on) to cut the bottle in half. Theo ended up with the makeshift cup. He didn’t want to drink (dumb dog) so I had to wedge his cup inside his kennel before I closed them back up and hopped out of the compartment to return to the office.

I spoke with Amir for a few more minutes before asking him about my possible return. “Karibu muda wowote,” he said… (welcome/come anytime). The visit began with me wondering if I’d get more than one visit with the dogs and ended with a handful of new friends and an open invitation to call on them anytime and tend to the pooches. I told him I’d probably return that evening to feed them. This is getting good. I like the train. What happened to all those horror stories from wazungu taking the train? I guess being able to return to a first class cabin and stretch out was a bonus instead of having to wedge myself in between people on bench seating in second or third class. We are blessed to be able to pay <$100 for our cabin. Way out of range for the common Tanzanian.

11:30 am – I make it back to a cold plate of breakfast awaiting me in our cabin. Didn’t matter cause I was way too hungry to care. It went down quick and easy as we sat next to the window watching the beautiful Tanzanian countryside slide by. Time to relax a little.

2:30 pm – We awoke after a short nap to some blazing heat. Even with the window and door wide open and wind flowing, the temp inside the cabin almost reached 90-degrees F. The DOGS!!! They for sure need water so time to exercise my open invitation. With a much bigger bottle this time, I headed for the cargo office. It only took me about 10 minutes to reach Amir this go round. Instead of making me wait, he had his assistant, a young fella I had yet to meet named Sayee, burrow a crawl path up through the foam mattresses. With a smile, he asked me if I thought I could handle the climb. I told him it reminded me of when I was a kid, trying to climb through things I shouldn’t be able to.

Sayee really took to the dogs which was a little shocking considering how scared most Tanzanians are of animals in general, especially unfamiliar ones. After I introduced him to Theo and Teddy, he really liked them and had tons of questions. Not a single Tanzanian has been able to guess the ages of the dogs due to their sizes. They think both are still just puppies. Big eyes and dropped jaws when they find out Teddy is almost 12 and Theo almost 7.

Both dogs looked great. The car actually got better air flow than our cabin because it had air coming in through the very front of the car where in the cabin, it could only slice in from the sides. Happy doggies.

After we took our time and allowed the mutts to roam around on the cargo, we made our way back through the mattress tunnel. I thanked them again and headed back to the cabin. Seeing the dogs in their great condition was encouraging to me but since Dana wasn’t able to see them, she was still worried a bit.

All this zig-zagging on a moving train was taking a toll on me. Time for another nap.

5:30 pm – Oh crap, the sun goes down at 6pm and it would be unwise for me to be anywhere outside this cabin after that. Gotta go feed the dogs, Oney. I’ll get back as soon as I can.

I loaded up a cup and a half of dog food in one cargo pocket of my shorts, dropped another water bottle in the other and made sure I had my cell phone strapped to my waist. Off we go. Zip through another first class car, through the lounge car, through a full dining and bar car until I hit the wall. Since my last visit up front, the amount of people in second and third class had to have at least doubled. People standing everywhere, even the walkway was hard to make out and there were how many cars between me and the dogs?!  Ruh-roh.

Part III will come later… maybe tomorrow… maybe not… hehehe…

Train Exercises

Time to quit unpacking all waken hours of the day and sit down to blog for a minute. Too many cool things happening for me to let them go untyped.

This past Monday morning, we awoke just before 5am to begin loading the taxi bus with our mound ‘o luggage. Out of all the things we left the States with, here’s what boarded the treni with us: 2 suitcases – 62 lbs, 57 lbs; 3 RubberMaid 18 gallon containers – 50 lbs, 47 lbs, 42 lbs; 2 Sterlite 18 gallon containers – 43 lbs, 37 lbs; 1 Sterlite 15 gallon container – 47 lbs; 2 dogs in kennels – 29 lbs, 10 lbs; 2 carry-on suitcases – 35 lbs, 26 lbs; 1 bookbag – 18 lbs; 1 diaper bag – 8 lbs; 1 purse – 135 lbs (just kidding!).

Everything else listed in my last post was intentionally left in Dar (some by mistake… sorry, Oney) except a green 68 lbs suitcase and the coleman cooler both of which were full of important things. KLM didn’t get those two pieces loaded onto the Dar flight so they came on the next one Tuesday night and were shipped up to Mbeya to us on Thursday. Miracle in and of itself.

At first, the dogs were loaded into our First Class (remember we’re in Africa) cabin with the rest of our luggage. Then, a treni official noticed them and said they had to go in the cargo car. It was the second car behind the locomotive and our car was the next to last car of the whole train. Nearly a mile in between us and the dogs of whom it was our responsibility to take care of for the duration of the journey. Oh boy, here we go.

9am – Train leaves on time. Wait… what did I just say? Where are we?!

10ish am – I kiss my Oney for maybe the last time as I embark on my trek all the way to the front of the train to check on the dogs and give them water.

3 days later – I arrive at the dogs. Just kidding

10:30ish am – I arrive near the front after passing through another first class car, a lounge car, a dining/bar car, multiple second class cars and multiple third class cars. Hundreds of Tanzanian eyes peered at this mzungu as he tried to navigate over legs, off of walls and nearly on their laps. It was fun listening to what they said about me as I passed. Tested my Swahili retention.

I swear the cargo car door was beaming with light when I got to it because I was so happy to have made it. I samahani (sorry; excuse me)’d a few fellas standing around the door and went to open it. Great, something blocking it very, very well from inside. Couldn’t be an upside down dog because it was too stout. That was good. So, I motioned to one of the fellas and he tried the door. He then summoned a guard to whom I greeted and told my situation. I saw he was very pleased this mzungu was trying to communicate with him in his mother tongue. Bonus points for me. He told me we will have to wait until the next stop (there were many, many of them) and go in from the outside. We stopped and before I could blink twice, he zipped out the side of the car, then the blocked door swung open with noone around it. Little spooky actually.

I open the door hoping there is only one cargo car (didn’t notice how many at loading) and immediately noticed it was a different one than where the dogs were. I climbed over beans, bicycles and who knows what else to arrive in a small office. Come to find out, it sat in between two compartments of the cargo car. The rear, through which I just passed, and the front, at the front of which sat our two thirsty dogs. Two Tanzanians were sitting in the office chatting when I hopped down from the loaded items. They were suprised to say the least to see a person such as me come out of nowhere.

I’ll pick up with more of the story tomorrow. This post looks to be pretty long! Great story though. Come back for part 2!